Holidays

New Friends!

The Wabash River continues to rise and flood the field behind my house. It is a very pastoral scene. The geese above are our most recent visitors. There are fish jumping and snakes prowling. So far everyone is doing well at keeping good boundaries! Today, between thunderstorms and rain, I worked cleaning up the yard. I pulled overgrown ivy, pruned the roses and cleaned the patio and outdoor furniture. I enjoyed making the yard look a bit tidier.

I think holidays are hard without family around. I love my parishioners - they are wonderful, fun people. They have expectations about who I am as their priest...always, even on holidays! I'm spending this Memorial Day at home, however, not because I'm avoiding my parishioners; I am having a colonoscopy tomorrow and they don't make hamburgers and chips in a clear liquid form!! I wish!!

This past Sunday was the Sunday after Ascension. "God has gone up with a shout..." These are the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 47 and they are a good description of Jesus' Ascension. We are between Jesus' Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit. It's an in between time of the year. Young people graduating from college are between school and jobs; those graduating from high school are "in between" waiting for the next thing to happen; and we are all waiting for summer to appear with its full blast of heat. Waiting is hard work. We have to slow down and figure things out as we wait. I wish slowing down came easier or more naturally. We do things so fast and expect instant results. The disciples must have wondered how it would all work without Jesus there with them. I wonder if they were close to giving up just as the Spirit filled them at Pentecost. I do still believe that waiting is important and that even when I get to the end of my rope I will be filled, but waiting is never easy. Being in between jobs or cars or houses or even in between projects is hard work. Even being in between sermons from one Sunday to the next has its tensions with plenty of "end of the rope" moments. Trusting God to "show up" is really at the heart of our faith....